Keep counting the small wins

We all want to be valued and recognized. PHOTO|FOTOSEARCH

What you need to know:

What you need to know:

  • We don’t have enough time to sweat all the small stuff, but we might have a little time left to do the big stuff
  • Not everything is cause for stress and worry – there is only so much we can control

A few weeks ago, I had a really, really, horrible cold. The kind of homa that men think they have when they only have the sniffles. The kind of homa that means that there is no way any of your deadlines are getting met, you lack the energy to nurse yourself back to health, or even call anyone else to do it for you.

It was bad. I was pretty sure I had Covid, until I heard that there’s a homa going around that’s making everyone bedridden for at least a week. Though I felt slightly better, especially after I had a Covid test done, I still felt like whatever mutation of the flu this was, it was going to kill me regardless.

When I get sick, I tend to go into a bit of a dark place, especially if it is something that completely takes over my body in a way I can’t control. I wallow in morbidity. I start thinking about my life and legacy. About who I’m leaving behind (if you’ve been reading this column for a few weeks, you know that I am leaving no one behind). I wonder what my search history will say if they check what the last thing I was looking at on my browser was.

Unfortunately, in this pandemic, there’s more than enough morbidity to go around. Sure, there are issues that are killing more Kenyans, sadly – issues like lack of basic sanitation, and road accidents. But the pandemic feels like it has taken foreground in our consciousness, so much so that all other sicknesses are forgotten.

At this point in the pandemonium, everyone knows someone who has had Covid, or lost someone to Covid – may they RIP. It makes you wonder why we insist on living our lives like we have a guarantee. No angel came to your bed last night and confirmed that you were going to wake up the next morning. No ‘Corona Messenger’ informed you that you’re not going to catch Corona, and if you do, there’s an ICU bed with your name on it ready to get you right back into the land of the living.

What this drives home for me is that there’s a chance I’m living life far too small! Have I done what I said I was going to try and do in this life – write a book, travel the world, get a newspaper column, win a lottery…to name a few? Did I call my mother today? Am I not texting that person who I actually like because I’m deeply scared of looking vulnerable and desperate?

In reality, we are all vulnerable and desperate. We all want to be valued and recognised. We all want our presence felt. If this virus has shown us anything, it is that we all need each other, and we all need a level of intimacy and interaction with our environment that makes us…well, human.

And, of course, we have seen what is genuinely important to us – and what isn’t. As we go into an indefinite lockdown and an earlier curfew once more, hopefully we can use the tools from the last one to guide us through, and ask ourselves questions like, who do we definitely want around us? How willing are we to keep the ones we love safe, and the ones they also love? When we say that we want a government that deals with pandemics and global crises differently, what does that look like? Who should be paid more? Then there’s my biggest question, since March 15 2020: Is tissue really an essential item?

(Yes. Yes, it is.)

We don’t have enough time to sweat all the small stuff, but we might have a little time left to do the big stuff. Not everything is cause for stress and worry – there is only so much we can control, like my disobedient cold. I hope you have the wisdom, as the prayer says, to know the difference.


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